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If you want to avoid seeing your 18-year-old turn into a freak within the first year of college, itâ€™s best to make sure he, she, or it avoids taking a course in sociology. That is especially the case if your kid plans to attend Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont.

Professor Laurie Essig teaches a course at Middlebury called â€œThe Sociology of Freakishness.â€ She justifies the course by saying that â€œAmerican popular culture began with the freak showâ€ and that â€œP.T. Barnum taught us that freaks are always made- not born.â€ Better not tell that to GLEAM (Gay & Lesbian Employees at Middlebury). They might argue that thereâ€™s such a thing as a â€œfreak gene.â€ Next thing you know, the freaks will be entitled to their own â€œFreak Resource Center.â€

According to Essig, a freak is â€œa performance or display of otherness for fun and profit.â€ She claims that she has designed her course in order to â€œexplore the history of the freak in American culture as well as how our culture is still structured around the trope of the freak show.â€ She wants students to become â€œsociologists of freakishnessâ€ whose job it is â€œto ask what configurations of power are at play in the performance. How do gender, race, nationality, sexuality and class come into play and how are those forms of power translated into a performance of otherness that forces us to watch it over and over again?â€

After I read that job description I began to worry that I might be one of those freaks theyâ€™re studying. After all, a lot of sociologists read my columns â€œover and over again,â€ seemingly â€œforcedâ€ to do so. Maybe, thereâ€™s a freak-watcher gene, even though â€œfreaks are made â€“ not born.â€ Maybe thereâ€™s even an intellectually consistent sociologist somewhere. Maybe the moon landing was faked. Maybe professional wrestling is real.

I want to take â€œThe Sociology of Freakishnessâ€ if no other reason than to take in the excellent assigned readings. Among those are Catherine Dunnâ€™s Geek Love and Rosemarie Thomsonâ€™s Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body.

There are also numerous lectures I found on the course syllabus for â€œThe Sociology of Freakishness,â€ which make me want to enroll right now. For example, one lecture, scheduled for early October, requires students to read Suzan-Lori Parksâ€™, â€œVenus.â€ Next, students ponder these profound intellectual questions: Can the freak be reclaimed as an active subject in her own enfreakment? Is that what Parks was trying to do? And why?

By mid-October, students are asked to read Lori Merishâ€™s â€œCuteness and Commodity Aesthetics,â€ and then watch Shirley Temple films in class. Finally, they are urged to bring to class â€œsome contemporary examples of Children as Freaks.â€
Read More: http://townhall.com/columnists/MikeAdams/2010/11/24/the_freakishness_of_sociology